Extract from Commons
statement on Ukraine
(Exeter) (Lab): The three oligarchs whom the
Prime Minister has sanctioned today have been sanctioned by the
United States for four years. We need to do better than that.
Will the Prime Minister re-examine the operation of unexplained
wealth orders, not a single one of which has been issued since he
became Prime Minister? Will he publish a list of all the Russians
who have obtained fast-track visas for residency, as he referred
to earlier, by giving cash to the UK Exchequer?
The Prime Minister: The National Crime
Agency is pursuing many investigations against
people, on unexplained wealth orders. On the right hon.
Gentleman’s point about visas, we are stopping tier 1 visas from
Russia.
For context, CLICK HERE
Extracts from Commons
debate on Sanctions: Russia
(Isle of Wight) (Con):...Where
is the adoption of the recommendations of the Foreign Affairs
Committee and ISC reports? One of the most chilling elements of
the ISC report was our own National Crime
Agency saying that it lacks the resources necessary
to take on the oligarchs. We—our own people, the public good—are
being silenced in our own country by UK lawyers in the pay of
some of the richest and most malign human beings on earth. Where
is the tightening of the rules at Companies House? I know we have
all said this, but I want to say it again. Banks in Germany,
Denmark and Sweden all laundered billions of pounds from Russia
but they used UK shell companies to do so. Is it really in our
national interest to have a system so open to corruption? If the
Government understand hybrid conflict, what are they doing to
deal with this threat?
(Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
(Lab):...
We are told that the National Economic Crime Centre is
comprehensively under-resourced for what it is trying to do.
The National Crime
Agency we are told, makes a calculation as to
whether it can afford the legal costs of a case before it
prosecutes unexplained wealth orders. Literally, it is being
scared off by the scale of the lawyers it opposes in court. The
regulator Companies House does not check the information that is
filed in front of it. We have journalists who are being silenced
in English courts, for so long sanctuaries of justice, now arenas
for silence. As we have heard so eloquently from others, we have
no timetable for the economic crime Bill...
For context, CLICK HERE
